Over the last several years, head-mounted displays have revolutionized the way people experience various kinds of digital media. For example, head-mounted displays may allow virtual-reality users to experience realistic, immersive virtual environments while playing video games, during flight simulation training, or even when interacting with co-workers around the globe. In addition to such virtual-reality applications, head-mounted displays may also enable users to augment reality and/or combine certain aspects of reality with those of the virtual world.
Despite incredible advances in such technology, traditional head-mounted displays may still have certain deficiencies that negatively impact the overall user experience. For example, some traditional head-mounted displays may exhibit noticeable visual delays following certain changes in position and/or orientation. More specifically, because these head-mounted displays often account for positional changes when incorporating virtual content into images and/or videos, any delays in obtaining the information used to determine such position changes may ultimately slow the entire image processing cycle.
Further complicating the issue, some traditional head-mounted displays may necessitate large amounts of power and/or computing resources to accurately determine changes in position and/or orientation. In an effort to reduce both delays and power consumption, these traditional head-mounted displays may sacrifice the accuracy of positional tracking systems by determining certain positional changes based on low-resolution image data.
The instant disclosure, therefore, identifies and addresses a need for additional apparatuses, systems, and methods for accelerating positional tracking of head-mounted displays.